He waited ten more seconds for the capacitor to fully charge, then stuck it around the corner and flashed the light.
“Let’s go!”
With Chance behind him, Tommy Carmellini went down the stairs to the main floor and used his periscope to examine the landing on the stairs leading down. Nothing.
On down to the landing, peeking around the corner.
“Motion detector,” he whispered to Chance.
Chance was breathing heavily inside the mask. It wasn’t the exertion, he decided, but the tension. He must be audible at fifty paces. He tried to ignore the sound of his own rasping and listen.
Were the guards coming? Two cameras were down—had they noticed? Would they come to inspect the things?
Or were the guards congregating right now, calling in troops?
“Microwave or infrared?” Chance asked, referring to the motion detector.
“One of each.”
“Beautiful.”
“Probably two independent systems.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“That’s a poor way to install them, actually. This is old technology, Mission Impossible stuff. We’ll just walk by the infrared detectors—all this clothing will help shield our body heat. If we move right along we should be okay.”
“And the microwave system?”
Carmellini had already removed a device the size of a portable CD player from his backpack. “Jammer,” he said, and examined the controls.
He turned it on and, holding it in front of him, walked down to the motion detectors. The one on the left was the microwave one, with a coaxial cable leading away from it. Carmellini pulled the cable an inch or so away from the wall and wedged the jammer into that space.
“Come on,” he whispered, and opened the door into the basement.
The two men found themselves in a hallway. Directly over their head was a camera that pointed the length of the hall, covering the door halfway down that must lead into the lab.
Carmellini took a small battery-powered camcorder from Chance’s backpack. He held it under the security camera for about a minute, filming the view down the hallway, then pushed the play button. The device now replayed the same scene on a continuous loop, and would do so until the batteries were exhausted. He slid a collar around the coaxial cable leading from the camera, tightened it, then used a pair of wire cutters to slice the coax away from the security camera.
The door into the lab had an alarm on it, one mounted high.
“The alarm rings if the circuit is broken,” Carmellini whispered. “It’s designed to prevent unauthorized exit from the lab, not entry. Won’t take a minute.”
He worked swiftly with a penknife and length of wire. By wiring around the contact on the door and jamb, he made the contact impossible to break.
Sixty seconds later he gingerly tried the door. Reached for the handle and—
Locked!
Now to work with the picks.
“They locked an emergency exit?” Chance demanded.
“Yeah. Real bastards, huh?”
Tommy Carmellini knew his business. When the lock clicked, he put his picks back in his knapsack, pulled the knapsack into position, and palmed his pistol.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
Carmellini eased the door open, looked quickly each way with just one eye around the jamb.
The door opened into a well-lit foyer. The entire opposite wall of the room was made of thick glass, which formed a wall of a large, well-equipped laboratory. No people in sight. And no security cameras or motion detectors.
Both men came in, pistols in their hands and pointed at the floor. Chance pulled the door shut behind them.
They knelt by the long window and with just their heads sticking up, surveyed the scene.
Row after row of culture trays, units for mixing chemicals, deep sinks, storage cabinets, big sterilizing units, stainless steel containers by the dozen, analysis equipment, retorts, microscopes …
“Holy damn,” Carmellini said softly. “They are sure as hell growing something in there.”
“Something,” Chance agreed.
On the end of the room to their left was a large air lock.
“That’s the way in.”
“Do we have to go in?”
“We need samples from those culture trays.”
Chance led the way. He walked, holding the pistol down by his right thigh.
Around the corner slowly, looking first.
There were actually two air locks. After they went through the first one, they found themselves in a dressing room with a variety of white one-piece coveralls hanging on nails. Each man donned one, pulling it on over his clothes, then zipping it tightly, fastening the cuffs with Velcro strips. Gas masks were there too, but they were already wearing masks.
The second lock was equipped with a large vacuum machine which suctioned dust and microorganisms from the white coveralls.
They opened the door to the lab and stepped inside.
“The culture trays,” Chance said, and led the way. From his backpack he took syringes, quickly screwed on needles.
The glass trays sat on mobile racks, three dozen to a rack. They were readily transparent, so he could look inside, see the bacteria growing on the food mix at the bottom of the tray.
He selected a rack of trays, pulled one tray from the rack and laid it on the marble-topped counter nearby. He opened it. Used a syringe. With the syringe about half-full, he unscrewed the needle, deposited the syringe in a plastic freezer bag and sealed it.
Meanwhile Carmellini had been exploring. As Chance sealed up his second sample from this rack of trays, Carmellini came back, motioning with his hand. “Better come look. Looks like they are growing several kinds of cultures.”
The second kind looked similar to the first, but the organisms were of a slightly different color. Chance selected a tray, took a sample, then replaced the tray on the rack, as he had the first one.
He was finishing his second sample from this batch when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carmellini motion for him to get down.
He dropped to a sitting position, finished sealing the syringe bag.
He put the samples into his knapsack, reached up on the countertop for his pistol.
Carmellini was creeping along below the counter with his pistol in his hand.
Someone was in the air lock. By looking down the aisle between the counters Chance could just see the top of his head as he pulled on the gas mask in the dressing room.
Whoever it was was coming in.
Carmellini looked at Chance, lifted his hands in a query: Now what?
Chance made a downward motion. Maybe this person would just come in, get something, then leave.
It would be impossible, he decided, to sneak out while the person was in the lab. Although the lab was large, at least a hundred feet long, anyone in the air locks could be seen from anywhere in the lab unless the viewer was behind a piece of large equipment.
Shit!
Well, the Cubans were about to discover that their lab was no longer a secret. That was not a disaster; unfortunate, perhaps. Perhaps not.
The person coming in wore a complete protection suit and mask. Not a square inch of skin was exposed.
Large for a woman. A man, probably. Almost six feet. Hard to tell body weight under a bag suit like that, but at least 180 pounds.
He checked the safety on the pistol. On. With his thumb he moved it to the off position, checked it visually.
Now the person was coming out of the air lock, walking purposefully down the aisle between the counters and trays of cultures.
William Henry Chance stood up, pointed the pistol straight in the face of the masked person walking toward him.
The man froze. If it was a man. Stopped dead and slowly raised his hands.
Out of the corner of his eye Chance saw Tommy Carmellini moving toward the Cuban.
“Find something to tie him with,” he said
loudly, hoping Carmellini would understand his muffled voice.
Carmellini seemed to. He held up a roll of duct tape. He moved toward the man, who turned his head so that he could get a good look at Carmellini.
Carmellini had his pistol in his hand. His holster was under the white coverall, as was Chance’s, so both men had carried their pistols with them in their hands.
Now Carmellini placed the pistol on a counter, well out of the man’s reach. He walked behind him.
The man pushed backward, slamming Carmellini against a counter.
Damnation! Chance couldn’t shoot for fear of hitting Carmellini. As if the .22-caliber bullets in the Ruger would drop a big man at this distance.
Chance walked around the counter, up the aisle, intending to shoot the Cuban in the head from as close as he could get.
Carmellini kicked violently and the Cuban went flying back into a rack of culture trays. Three or four of the trays fell from the rack and shattered on the floor.
The man launched himself at Carmellini, who ducked under a right cross. The man kept right on going, heading for the pistol lying on the counter.
Carmellini caught him by the back of his coverall and swung him bodily around. With a mighty punch he sent the man reeling backward, straight into the rack of culture trays he had already hit. The man slipped, fell amid the broken glass.
Without sights, wearing the silencer, the Ruger was hard to aim. Chance squeezed off a round anyway. Where the bullet went he never knew.
Before he could fire again the man screamed in agony. All his muscles went rigid. He bent over backward, screaming in a high-pitched wail.
“Let’s go!” Carmellini yelled.
The man got control of an arm. He tore at his mask, trying to get it off, all the while screaming and thrashing around on the floor amid the broken glass.
“Holy shit.”
The stricken man finally just ran out of air. All motion stopped. He was bent over backward, almost double, his head within a few inches of his heels.
Careful not to step on the broken glass, Chance bent over the man. He carefully took off the gas mask.
Eyes rolled back in his head, every muscle taut in a fierce rigor, the man seemed almost frozen.
“He must have torn his suit,” Chance muttered to himself. The Cubans must have vaccinated everyone with access. Why didn’t the vaccination protect him?
“Let’s get our asses through the air lock and get the fuck outta here,” Carmellini said loudly.
They stood in the vacuum room for the longest time, neither man willing to be the first to leave.
“We must go,” Carmellini said at last, after almost ten minutes of suction, after using a high-pressure jet of air from a hose to blast every nook and fold of the coverall.
They hung the coveralls on the nails. Stood in the next air lock, were vacuumed again, then they were out, still wearing their gas masks.
“We might kill everyone in Havana,” Chance said.
“We’ll never know it,” Carmellini shot back. “We’ll be in hell before they are.”
“Can’t figure out why the vaccination didn’t protect him.”
“Later. How the hell are we going to get out of here?”
“The easiest way is to just walk out the front door, shoot both the guards, and walk around the corner to the van.”
“They’ll see us going up the stairs.”
“The elevator. We’ll use the elevator. Keep the pistols where they can’t see them.”
“You are fucking-A crazy, man. One crazy motherfucker.”
The elevator was right there with the door open. Chance walked in. When Carmellini was aboard, he pushed the button to take it up.
With their pistols down by their legs, they walked out of the elevator, straight for the guard shack at the front door.
Only one man was there, reading something. He looked up as they approached. Now he stood.
“Qué pasa—?” he began, and Chance shot him in the forehead from six feet away.
The guard toppled over backward.
Chance and Carmellini kept going, out the door at a walking pace, down the sidewalk under the streetlights looking like two refugees from a flying saucer, and around the corner. They jerked open the rear door of the van and jumped in.
Chance ripped off the mask.
“Let’s get the hell outta here,” he roared at the driver, who was as surprised at their sudden appearance as the guard had been. “Drive, damn it, drive!”
As the van jostled and swayed through the city streets, they sat in the back staring at each other, waiting for the disease to hammer them.
Waited, and waited, and waited …
CHAPTER TWELVE
Six hours after William Henry Chance and Tommy Carmellini walked out of the University of Havana science building, Dr. Bouchard was on his way to Washington via Mexico City with two of the culture samples in his diplomatic pouch. Three hours later one of the lowest-ranking mission employees with diplomatic status left on a plane to Freeport, there to transfer to a flight to Miami, and then on to Washington. This employee carried the other two samples in her diplomatic pouch.
Chance and Carmellini were dropped at their hotel after changing clothes in the van. “Burn those clothes immediately, and don’t touch them with your bare hands,” Chance told the driver.
At the hotel both men went straight to their rooms, stripped, and stood in the shower for as long as they could stand it.
Standing under the shower head Chance waited for the first symptom to announce its arrival. Every now and then he shuddered, despite the hot water, as cold chills ran up and down his spine. He had a raging headache. When he got out of the shower he toweled himself dry, got in bed and arranged a wet, cool washcloth across his forehead.
The lab worker writhing on the floor, the startled face of the guard the instant before he died—these scenes played over and over in his mind. The death throes of the lab worker were bad enough, but the face of the guard, when he saw the pistol rising, saw the silencer, knew Chance was going to shoot: that face Chance would carry to his grave.
He shouldn’t have had to kill the guard. The truth of the matter was that he panicked when the lab worker died horribly; he stood in the air locks thinking he or Carmellini would be next, any second. He had wanted out of that building so badly he had thrown caution to the wind and bolted blindly for the front door. It was a miracle that there weren’t two or three guards standing by the main entrance, that they didn’t have guns out as the two figures from biological hell stepped out of the elevator.
Ah, the stink of Lady Luck.
Lying there in the darkness he thought about microorganisms, wondered what was in the sample vials, wondered why the lab worker, who must have been immunized, died such a painful, horrible death.
One thing was certain: The Cubans were well on their way to having biological weapons. And the only conceivable target was the United States.
With his head pounding, unable to sleep, he turned on his small computer and typed an E-mail reporting the intrusion and his findings. After he encrypted the message, he used the telephone on the desk to get on the Web and fire the message into cyberspace.
Then he went back to bed, and finally to sleep.
The American stood amid the shards of glass looking at the body of the lab worker. He wore a protective garment that covered him head to toe and a mask that filtered the air he breathed. He looked at everything, taking his time, then exited the laboratory through the air lock.
Alejo Vargas was waiting for him. He said nothing, merely waited for the American to talk.
“The virus has apparently mutated,” the American said finally. “I thought the strain was stable, but …” He gave the tiniest shrug.
“Mutated?”
“Possibly.”
“Come now, Professor. I have not asked for scientific proof. Tell me what you think.”
“A mutation. A few days with the electron microscope would
give us some clues. We need to do more cultures to be sure. It would help if I could dissect the dead man, see how the disease affected him.”
“Like you did the others?”
“You told me they were killers, condemned men. We had to know!”
“What if the disease gets away from you at the morgue? What if it spreads to the general population?”
“With the proper precautions the danger is minuscule. Man, the advancement of human knowledge requires—”
“No,” Vargas said. He gestured to the lab. “If that gets away from us, for whatever reason, there won’t be a human left alive on this island.”
“Then don’t ask me for opinions,” the professor snapped. “You can guess as well as I.”
Alejo Vargas’s eyes narrowed to slits. His voice was cold with fury. “I wanted to use an anthrax agent, but no, you insisted on poliomyelitis. Now you tell me it mutated, as I feared it might.”
The damned fool, the American thought. Of course he had insisted on a virus—for Christ’s sake, his life work was studying viruses, not bacteria.
Vargas continued, pronouncing the sentence: “We spent all this money, built the warheads, installed them, and we took huge risks to do it. Don’t talk to me of acceptable risks.”
The professor was not the type to calmly submit to lectures from his intellectual inferiors. “Don’t get wrathy with me, Vargas. You’re a stupid, ignorant thug. I didn’t design the universe and I can’t take responsibility for it. I merely try to understand, to learn, to increase the store of man’s knowledge.”
The American lost his temper at that point and spluttered, “Biology isn’t engineering, goddammit! Sometimes two plus two equals five.”
Vargas turned his back on the professor. He stared into the lab, which appeared cold and stark under the lights yet was full of poisonous life.
“I don’t understand what happened in there,” the American said. “He didn’t just fall. It looks like there was a struggle.”
“Someone broke in,” Vargas said.
The professor was horrified. “Broke in? Past the guards? Who would be so foolish?”
“Someone who wanted to see what was in there,” Vargas said, and turned to look at the other man’s face. A note of satisfaction crept into his voice as he added, “Probably Americans. Perhaps CIA.”
Cuba Page 21
